In a way, my work is a polished descendant of the “face-down-on-the-photocopier” self portraits most of us have enjoyed. Using a scanner is really just a non-traditional form of photography. With this technique you can achieve incredible detail that quickly drops into beautiful shadows. The colour and shadows create an ethereal-type aesthetic, which is uncanny in its resemblance to 16th and17th century Dutch paintings of Memento Mori. I didn’t directly choose this technique for the project; it was more of a happy accident. It was the aesthetics of this technical process that influenced my exploration of these themes, and not vice versa. I think this creative process is rare in art making, especially with new media.
A type of Memento Mori, Vanitas paintings from the 16th and 17th century were often characterized by a combination of enticing still-life objects such as fruit and flowers, along with reminders of the transient nature of life such as skulls and hourglasses. This juxtaposition was meant to point out the ultimate shortcomings of worldly pleasures.
For this series, I asked women to participate and to include items in their portraits, as a sort of still-life defining who they are. Through their pictured memories, their favourite mementos, or the pleasing petals surrounding them, I intended for these portraits to reflect a personal story of Vanitas for each individual woman. The sensual use of hair in this series is what ties them together, and creates a kind of surreal texture to the work. The Vanitas themes remain present reminding the viewer that vanity is futile. Despite their foreboding qualities, the images remain undeniably beautiful and hint at a sexual tension. Blushing flower petals rustling open and tousled hair could be simultaneously interpreted as either qualities of the Vanitas theme or lusty indulgences.
This series has made me view not only death, but vanity differently, and bizarrely how both are so interconnected. It takes a personal unarming to show these self-portraits, especially in large format. There is no hiding or concealing in these portraits, they are hyper-realistic, so signs of aging and blemishes are on full display. These portraits show impurities, but done so in a graceful and whimsical manner.
